10.28.08

Microsoft’s anti-GNU/Linux incentives are an issue that we’ve studied quite closely and carefully [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. 9, 10]. We must consider what’s sometimes referred to as "sort bribery" and realise that, realistically speaking, bribes can be made in all sorts of way. We even mentioned Novell in this context, even though it goes a good number of years back to the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.

Bribes, or to put it more mildly — “incentives” — can be granted in a variety of artistic and original ways. Yesterday there was a timely story about it in the news. It’s a political story by its very nature, but the Senator who was accused and found guilty of corruption also battled against the neutral Web. He may have caused harm to the Internet.

In each case, there are gentler words and terms that describe the transactions involved. Words may include: “marketing”, “evangelism”, “gifts”, “rewards”, “incentives”, “favours”, “obligation”, “contracts”, “studies”, and “independent but Microsoft-commissioned.” We have seen it all before.

To get a glimpse at what Microsoft has done in Nigeria, here are some places to start [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]. There is a lot more to be said about what Microsoft has been doing in the whole of Africa. It is no surprise that some local shops called for a boycott against Microsoft and Intel.

In Nigeria, Microsoft proposed paying $400,000 last year under a joint-marketing agreement to a government contractor it was trying to persuade to replace Linux with Windows on thousands of school laptops. The contractor’s former chief executive describes the proposal as an incentive to make the switch — an interpretation Microsoft denies. In Namibia and Nigeria, where it has sought government contracts, the company hired family members of government officials. Microsoft says they were qualified.

It was only a week and a half ago that we spotted a related incident. A relative of government officials (son of a former president) is attacking bloggers who are critical of Microsoft. This one is a particular example from Nigeria.

“No other large companies as far as I know use their employees as attack dogs to silen[ce] dissent. It’s time for Microsoft to stop this nonsense.”

On Oct. 30, Mandriva announced it had won the contract to provide Linux software for the Classmates. Microsoft didn’t give up. The next day, it delivered TSC a revised draft agreement with an “effective date” of Nov. 1, documents show. It offered to pay $400,000 to TSC. In the revised agreement, there no longer was any mention of TSC having to comply with Microsoft’s code of conduct.

In an Oct. 31 email, TSC told Mandriva that there had been a “change in circumstances,” and that it “has recently reached an understanding with Microsoft to convert” the Classmates from Linux to Windows.

Mandriva’s chief executive, Francois Bancilhon, responded by posting “an open letter to Steve Ballmer,” Microsoft’s CEO, on Mandriva’s Web site. “What have you done to these guys to make them change their mind like this?” he wrote. “It’s quite clear to me, and it will be to everyone. How do you call what you just did, Steve? There are various names for it, I’m sure you know them.” Mr. Bancilhon declined to elaborate on his letter.

In the end, the joint-marketing agreement was never signed, and the Microsoft deal unraveled. Microsoft says it gave up after “it became clear” that the Nigerian government wanted Linux.

Recently in a senate committee hearing regarding h-1b visas, bill gates kind’ve threatened the senators with pulling his (microsoft’s) business out of the states and relocate to other countries. He said there weren’t enough talented developers in the states. He says that with a straight face; he is shameful, how low can you go. He even opened a compound up in Canada.

I’d say call his “trump” and help him, his lobbyists and, let’s not forget, his paid politicians, move out of the states.

Great developers come from all countries. Like unblemished jewelry an excellent developers’ labor is worth more than non-excellent. Monopolies are just trying to devalue excellent programming skills for their own greed. Money for nothing.

What I heard yesterday in Lou Dobbs: Some companies that were using h-1b visa workers are paying them way below current market-value and some are not even getting paid. Making people work for nothing is one of the highest forms of dis-ingenuousness & disrespect (equ; slavery)

What Else is New

The GNOME Board of Directors works for IBM and/or Microsoft at GitHub; it’s not entirely surprising that despite opposition from some GNOME developers the head of the GNOME Foundation, preceded by people who have since defected to Microsoft, described Dr. Richard Stallman as “reprehensible” and called for him to step down (from his very own thing, never mind the “G” in GNOME standing for GNU)

Principled, opinionated, self-governing individuals aren't any good for corporations looking to not only use their projects but to totally control those projects (copyleft licences such as GPL already make that hard enough for them, so it takes more time for legal 'hacks' such as software patents, "clown computing" and GitHub)

Certain groups that claim to represent the values of "Open Source" are in fact promoting the interests of Microsoft, GitHub etc. (i.e. monopoly or "open" as in a bunch of monopolies like Facebook and Microsoft sharing code snippets/resources over GitHub)

Torvalds and others who are middle-aged (or older) males are often torpedoed using weakly-backed allegations (or insinuations/innuendo) of sexism; that does not seem to matter and won't matter when they treat men the same (or worse)

Linus Torvalds was not fully canceled; nor was Richard Stallman, who's still heading the GNU Project (under conditions specified by those looking to oust him; people who code for Microsoft GitHub and many IBM employees)

General Hugh Shelton, Chairman of the Board of Red Hat, explains (keynote in 2011 Red Hat Summit/JBoss World) that he was introduced to the system as part of a military campaign; it basically helped war, not antiwar

Techrights examines Red Hat’s (IBM’s) hypocritical claims about the Free Software Foundation, founded by Richard Stallman back when IBM was the “big scary monopolist”; IBM employees were prominent among those pushing to oust Stallman from the GNU Project, which he founded, as well

The (in)famous letter against Richard Stallman (RMS), which was signed by many Red Hat employees with Microsoft (GitHub) accounts, doesn’t look particularly good in light of recent revelations/findings; it increasingly looks like IBM simply wants Microsoft-hosted and “permissively” licensed stuff, just like another project it announced yesterday and another that it promoted yesterday

One might not expect this from a so-called 'charity'; the Gates Foundation's critics are often met with unprecedented aggression, threats and retribution, which make one wonder if it's really a charity or a greedy cult of personalities (Bill and Melinda)

The assault on the media by Bill Gates is a subject not often explored by the media (maybe because a lot of it is already bribed by him); but we're beginning to gather new and important evidence that explains how critics are muzzled (even fired) and critical pieces spiked, never to see the light of day anywhere

Microsoft buying GitHub does not demonstrate that Microsoft loves Open Source (GitHub is not Open Source and may never be) but that it loves monopoly and coercion (what GitHub is all about and why it must be rejected)

The European Patent Office (EPO) keeps granting fake patents that cause a lot of real harm (examiners are pressured to play along and participate in this unlawful agenda); nobody is happy except those who profit from needless, frivolous lawsuits

After contributing to the cancellation of Richard Stallman (RMS) based on some falsehoods perpetuated in the media we're seeing the sort of thing one might expect from IBM (more so now that it totally controls Fedora and RHEL)